A new property portal that allows anyone with a camera to list properties has received an offer of 85% of its £150,000 fundraising target from a potential investor, but its founder insists that agents have nothing to fear.

Clive Cain, founder of My Backyard, said that an unnamed angel investor had pledged to provide a package of funding, digital marketing, platform development and branding, worth a total of £130,000 to back his idea.

The offer is contingent on a co-investor coming on board.

It is separate from the Crowdcube pitch which My Backyard has set up.

So far that has raised £510 with 18 days to go and is closed to the wider public.

It only opens to the public once 20% of the target has been raised and Cain said that as his angel investor didn’t want to go along the crowdfunding route, the public is now unlikely ever to see it.

Once a deal has been confirmed, Cain hopes that the portal could be developed and launched by late summer.

He is about to embark on an advertising campaign through industry publications which will encourage vendors, landlords, agents and suppliers to sign up to the service, which will be based on a subscription model, for free in their capacity as early adopters.

Initially, Cain, who has experience of running relocation companies as an accommodation broker, will focus on building a base of consumers among people who are planning to relocate for work either coming into the UK from abroad, or moving within the UK, and looking for a home to rent.

He claimed that My Backyard’s instant messaging capability would make it much easier to connect prospective tenants with landlords.

Cain said: “It has to be niche to start with because we are focusing on early adopters. They will be young professional millennials who have been offered a job and have to relocate.

“This platform will help them and it will help the recruitment agents because when they are making the offer, they no longer have to sort out the accommodation and make lots of calls, they can just click, follow, connect, and there we are – all done. And that is why we know that a lot of recruitment agents will sign up to this because it is free.”

He also envisages agents being involved, uploading their listings to the platform in the first instance, although they have to share it with consumers who are also able to market their properties via YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram by uploading their own smartphone photos or videos.

He said: “Agents mustn’t feel threatened by it at all.

“Actually what we are doing is opening the market and making it much bigger because we are saying to agents and landlords if you have got a property to let, think about people who are relocating as well, not just people living in the vicinity but people coming from Australia.

“They have a full-time job and they want the accommodation and they are willing to let. If you open the market, this instant messaging means that someone in Australia, as well as someone living five minutes away, both have access to the same listing and both can make an offer, so you can decide.”

However, he also admitted that the “bigger opportunity” for the proposition is driven by a “culture change” in the lettings market, with the impending ban on fees and the expectation that this will drive many landlords to start self-managing their properties.